


Friends Shouldn't Kiss Me Like You Do

by lowlights



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Phan, 2010 Phan, 2011 Phan, 2012 Phan, 2013 phan, 2014 phan, 2015 Phan, 2016 Phan, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dan POV, Heavy Angst, M/M, Phan Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-11 14:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7896814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowlights/pseuds/lowlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan knows Phil is in love with him, and has been since 2009. But as he realizes his feelings for Phil, Phil slowly stops loving him. </p>
<p>Short chapters<br/>dw there's a happy fluffy ending :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skype Calls and Confliction

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I'm trying to write two phanfictions at one time idk how this is gonna go...  
> This is just gonna be a short chaptered fic  
> also I usually hate writing in the first person but I thought that it made the most sense here so hopefully it doesn't make you vomit much love

(this fic will always be from Dan's point of view to Phil hope that's not too confusing)

I lie in my bedroom, late at night, watching the seconds flick by on the clock. 

I'm waiting, of course, for you. 

My computer screen is the only thing lit in the room, casting a fluorescent blue light across my face as I watch your icon in the corner, hoping that you'll come online soon so that we can talk. It's Wednesday night, after all, and we always Skype on Wednesdays. 

Finally the little green dot shows up next to your name, and minutes later your face is taking up my laptop screen. It's dark in your room, the screen made of about 16 pixels, but I can still see the blue in your eyes and your hair falling around your face like a black mane. 

I smile wide, and say a quiet hello. You laugh, say hi back, and we fall back into the casual banter we've gotten so used to. We always have something to talk about, somehow. I try to keep my laughs silent, even though the door is closed and my family is fast asleep. They know about you, of course, but they don't know that I Skype you late at night, into the early morning. 

We've been talking for hours now, and my eyelashes feel heavy on my face. I wrap my arms in a blanket, to keep warm. We stop chatting for a while, letting the comfortable silence fall around us as we just stare at each other. You've promised to meet me someday soon. I smile at the thought of seeing you in real life, not just through a shitty video screen. 

You break the silence and my train of thought. 

"Dan, can I ask you something?"

Your voice sounds different, heavier, and my eyes find yours through the screen. 

"Sure you can."

"Have you ever- I mean, would you... Would you ever... Have you thought about dating a guy?"

There is silence as I swallow. 

"Uh, I don't know... Is your mum still in America?"

Changing the subject and trying to forget what happened. If there was an Academy Award for it, I would win. You answer my question, but you sound fragile. I know what you were really asking me. You know that I know. Your eyes don't find mine for the rest of the time we talk, and there's a thick wall between us that seems to have just popped up. 

We're just friends. Just. Friends. 

I make a joke, you laugh. It's okay, It's definitely okay, I think. 

You're fine. I'm fine. We're fine. We're friends. 

So I should just ignore the way you play with a strand of your hair and swallow as you tell me you have to go. 

Next Wednesday everything will be the same again, and we can just forget. 

 

I should have fucking realized what was true. I should have realized how I really felt. 

But no. I was stupid, selfish, in denial. 

And damn, would it cost me.


	2. Birthdays and Late Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello again !!  
> follow my tumblr if you want @buzzlester  
> 

A little over a year after that Skype call, you are twenty-three and today I am turning nineteen.

It's the beginning of summer, and it's the evening, and you've called me to tell me you want to see me, go for dinner, as it's my birthday. I happily accepted, always excited to see my best friend. 

The streets are crowded, and we walk side by side, pressed up against each other's sides on the pavement. 

We talk, we laugh, we sit down and you order me a drink, whispering that "nobody needs to know" how old I'm turning. 

Hours later, the restaurant probably hates us as we've lingered way after the check was brought away with your credit card attached to it. We look out the window at the people on the streets, making up stories. Your eyes are twinkly at night, I notice. The stars are out, the streetlights are glowing quite brightly. You tell me that I should just walk back to your apartment with you, as I shouldn't go home drunk in a cab. 

I happily agree, in love with the feeling of standing under the stars with my best friend. 

Your hand lingers on the small of my back, leading me through the streets. I can see a ghost of a smile on your lips, and I can pretend you're drunk on wine and not on the feeling of my back through my shirt. 

We get back to your little apartment, you give me a sweatshirt and sweatpants to change into. We lie on your worn out couch together, me watching tv, you watching me. 

I feel your arm around my back but it's easy to forget. I'm sleepy, tipsy, and you're all smiles, letting me nestle into you as I continue to stare at the blurry television. 

You carry me to your bed and we lie there together. Your voice sounds tired, but you still talk to me, telling me stories. I feel your arm sneaking over my chest, I feel your head cuddling into my neck, I feel your legs start to tangle in mine, but it doesn't mean anything. 

We're friends, nothing more. Friends share beds, friends lie down together, friends drink wine together and hold hands together and walk home under the night sky. 

For a while, reality is just a bit altered. It starts to rain and I can hear it on your roof. The room gets colder. You fall asleep, breathing me in. 

I forget, for a moment, that you're in love with me. 

 

When you wake up in the morning, I am gone, leaving you alone with your sweatshirt and your coffee and your tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading and if you want check out my other fic "Extra Ordinary"
> 
> i love youuuuu


	3. Champagne and Balconies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @buzzlester on tumblr if you wanna talk to meeeeee ( i would love to talk to you about whatever )  
> "Extra Ordinary" is my other fic the chapters are longer and the story will be too if you're into that :)))

You're twenty four and I'm twenty, finally you can't tease me about being a teen anymore.

I'm at university now, in Manchester so I can be near you, my best friend in the world. We live together now, eating each other's cereal and watching tv late at night. 

It's New Years Eve and we've decided to spend the last day of 2011 in our flat, alone together, just how we like it. We're on the balcony, glasses of champagne in our hands, and we're looking out over the city, which is alive with lights and laughter. 

You're smiling so big, with your tongue resting between your teeth, and it makes me happy to see my best friend so bubbly. 

I'm half drunk, and no part of you is sober. 

Your eyes are twinkly again, like that night on my nineteenth birthday, and I'm laughing for no reason, just the way you look in the lights makes me want to smile. 

Suddenly the whole city starts counting down, making you jump and spill a little champagne on your button down. 

"10...9..."

You take a step closer to me, and your smile is replaced by a little nervous shrug. I start laughing again, which makes you laugh too, and your hand's on my shoulder in an attempt to keep upright. 

"8...7..."

A stray firework explodes across the sky, and I watch it go off in the reflection of your eyes. 

"6...5...4..."

You set your champagne down, and I do too, and we're still laughing and your hands are straying all over my arm and my hand is on your shoulder too. 

"3...2...1.... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!"

The sky lights up with hundreds of colors and so do your eyes, which, wow, are really close to me, and you're still smiling that precious smile and your hand is holding mine, and you lean your face forward until your chapped lips are pressing into mine. 

I can taste the alcohol on your breath, and my eyes are wide open, surprised, and I smell your shampoo, and I let you kiss me. 

 

Cheers erupt from the city below us, and you're pressing me against the columns of our balcony, and I let you kiss me.  
And maybe, maybe, I kiss back a little bit. Just to feel what it would feel like. 

 

In the morning, when I leave my room, I make it clear that we aren't gonna talk about it. I tell you that we're best friends, and that's all, okay? That's all that there ever will be. 

You agree, of course, nodding your head. But I notice you bite your lip and look down, I notice how you don't look at me. I notice how you don't talk because you're afraid that there are tears hiding in the back of your throat.

You hide your face behind newspapers that you never read, turn around to face the coffee machine that you already used twice this morning. 

I can take a hint. I leave the flat, deciding to go for a walk around the city. I think about you. I decide I like it when you wear your glasses, and I noticed this morning that they were foggy from some not-so-well hidden tears in your eyes. 

Fine. But I did what was right. We're friends, and we'll always be only friends. I love you, of course I love you, because you're my best friend. But you're *only* my best friend. 

No more moments of suspended reality that we pretend never happened in the morning. 

You and I will go on like we always have. 

Dan and Phil. Our names go together, best friends forever, and I can't lose you. 

So I have to tell you the truth, which is that I can never look at you the same way that you stare at me. 

 

Even if I don't realize that that isn't true at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your kudos <333 you guys are really cool!!


	4. Dried Tears and Hidden Fears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @buzzlester scream

This year has not been easy on us. 

I told you. As soon as I came back to the flat that day, I looked you right in the eye and I told you that we were just friends. 

And I told you that friends should sleep in other beds, and that friends shouldn't kiss. 

Talking is less easy now, our casual banter seems a bit strained. It's the worst feeling in the world, losing a connection with your best friend. I feel like I'm falling, because if I don't have you, then I'm basically alone.

The not-talking is better than the fights, though.

And here I lie, late at night after I know you've fallen asleep, listening to the sound of my quiet sobs. I relive every fight in full detail, and it hurts me to see your face like that, screwed up in anger, in pain, in sadness. 

I cry a lot nowadays, and sometimes it hits me at the worst times, so that you catch me frantically wiping tears on my jumper as you stride into the lounge. 

I can tell you want to help me, I can tell by the way you sit next to me, so close that we almost touch. 

But you don't know what you can do to help, you don't know whether touching me is even fucking allowed in whatever I've made this relationship become. 

With each passing day I notice you get closer and closer to tears, and I know that you you can't keep this up for much longer.

I can see it in your eyes that it hurts you to be near me, and I can't stand it. Sometimes I hear it in your voice, in the way it seems to shatter in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes I see it in the way your hands shake a bit underneath the breakfast table, reach out to comfort me, then quickly retract. 

I hate seeing you mad because I know that you aren't mad. 

Neither of us are. You're hurt, you're broken, I've been torturing you by being near you and telling you that I don't want you. I make you remember that I don't want you whenever you see me look at you, I can tell. You have never yelled at me. Whenever we fight, your voice is a ghost, quiet but firm, and mine is a roar. Sometime I see you recoil when I yell, which is what hurts me the most. 

Watching yourself hurt your best friend, the person that you care about most in the whole world, is poison for the soul. 

The truth is, I'm not angry at you. I'm confused. And I'm sad, but you know that, you can tell from the way tears have taken up a permanent residence on my face. 

I'm angry at myself. Because spending all the nights alone in my bed, reliving all our arguments, makes me want to curl up beside you, makes me want to spend some time in that other reality where the rules are bent and friends plant kisses on each other's mouths. 

Yes, I'm angry at myself. 

 

I am angry because I think I just might be in love with you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you noticed i can confirm that this whole fic is kinda based off of an obscure ed sheeran song  
> It's called "Friends" if you want to listen and yeah i did maybe directly use some lines ***whoops***


	5. Blankets and Snowflakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eeeeeee idk why but I think this is my favorite chapter??? tell me what you think!!

It's January 29th, 2013, and you are turning twenty-six. 

We're spending the weekend at your family's place up in Lancashire, and it's freezing. 

We're bundled up, me in a thin black fleece and you in a puffy space coat that you seem to be way too fond of. 

We haven't fought in a couple months, and things are getting back to normal between us. It's a tentative kind of normal, though, a normal where you know that there are boundaries but don't know where they lie. A normal where I don't even want there to be boundaries but it's too late to take back the words I said over a year ago. 

I'm sitting by the fire, trying to get warm, and you're chatting to your parents. 

Finally your mum exclaims that the cake is ready from the kitchen, and I get up to sit closer to you. Your mom enters the living room with a giant cake in her hands, way too big for the four of us to finish. She's lit twenty six candles, and she's singing at the top of her lungs. I join in, along with your dad. 

You sit there, heat rising onto your cheeks, a bit awkwardly because you still don't know what to do when other people are singing happy birthday to you. 

You blow out all your candles except one in your first go, and you ask me to blow it out for you as it's right next to me. We share a smile as your parents cheer. 

Your eyes are wide and full of wonder, and yeah it's taken me a while, but I know that I love you. 

I'm wildly in love with you, and my arms are crossed around my chest, and you're smiling at me like you were that night out on the balcony. 

Your parents go to bed and we decide that we want to sleep in the living room next to the fire so we keep warm. 

I want to suggest that we sleep on the couch together, but I don't know how to say it. I have already broken your heart once, and I was already so cruel to you. I don't want you to think that I'm stringing you along again. 

I'm watching you cuddle into a blanket, your eyes so damn blue. 

I remind myself, firmly tell myself, that I will not tell you that I love you. Not today. Because it's been a long time since we've shared a bed and a kiss, and I can't risk losing you because I love you, I love you like a friend and like a more-than-friend. 

And nobody else will look at me like you. 

It's late at night, or should I say early in the morning, when you shake me awake. The fire has died to a few glowing embers, and I can see them reflect in your eyes. 

"Dan, let's go outside!" 

You sound like a kid on Christmas morning, and who am I to deny you the simple pleasure of playing in the snow, even if it's 1 am. 

It's snowing hard, flakes trapped on your long, dark eyelashes. You're cold, you wrap your coat around yourself as tight as you can, and suddenly you've taken off, running into the dark of the snowstorm, and I'm following you, feeling my feet going numb.

You're laughing, and I'm laughing, and we're staring at each other and snow is swirling around us and that coat makes you look so damn ridiculous but at least it's keeping you warm, and I lunge forward and bear hug you. 

You're taken by surprise at first, but your arms find their way around me, warm in the middle of the cold. The house is just a bit of light that we can see through the snow, our laughter seems to be the only real thing. 

And suddenly I catch your hand in mine. 

Your laughter stops. Your eyes stare up at mine, sad and a bit longing. 

"Dan, we shouldn't."

Goddamn right, we shouldn't. I drop your hand, murmur an apology, and everything is silent and a bit cold for a couple seconds. 

Then you hit me with a snowball and I realize why you're my best friend. Because you make life easier on me, because you're always there for jokes and smiles and stares. 

And I know how much I love you, how much I have loved you ever since I was eighteen years old and staring at you longingly through a laptop screen. 

I hit you with a snowball. We're back to laughing and calling out. 

 

I won't tell you I love you because I don't know if you love me back. I'm afraid you don't, but for now I can keep myself safe in a pocket of peace found in the early morning where we laugh and smile and our arms find each other and I can't tell which parts of you are touching me but all I know is I can smell your cologne and it smells like going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your kudos ( you guys r cool )
> 
> other fic: "Extra Ordinary" (v long v superhero)


	6. Bedside Lights and Sleeping Faces

I am madly in love with you, Phil Lester, but you are not in love with me anymore. 

I can see it in the way you look at me. You smile, you laugh, but there's no longing in your eyes or begging in the upturn of your mouth. 

I'm twenty three and you're twenty seven and we're still best friends, nothing has changed between us. 

We watch tv together in the morning and in the night, but you're laughing at the jokes and whispering side comments, and I'm thinking about how adorable you look wrapped up in a blanket and all I want to do is the close the gap between us and envelope you up into my arms, but I can't. 

We go on walks together around the city, and you're reading weird signs and I want to reach out and take your hand and pull you in so that we're walking side by side and pressing up against each other just like that night I turned nineteen, but I can't. 

I want to pull you in by the hood of your sweatshirt and press my forehead against yours for a few seconds before I move to place my lips onto yours, but I can't.

You are not in love with me anymore, and It's getting harder to stomach. 

It's getting harder to talk to you and it's getting harder to sit so painfully close to you and it's getting harder to brush my hand against yours and pretend like it didn't set off fireworks in my skin. 

I lie awake in the night because I can't fall asleep. Tears track a steady stream down my face when I'm thinking about you in the dark. I toss and I turn but all that fills my head are memories of cuddling up to you in bed, of letting you warm me up and smelling your cologne and waking up with my face pressed into your hair. 

At three in the morning when I know I'm not going to be able to fall asleep, my feet find their way to your door. I know you won't ever be awake, I know that I wouldn't tell you the problem even if you were, but I can't help it. 

Sometimes your light in on, your laptop is sitting on your lap, you're sat up with the covers gathered around your waist. I tuck you in, turn out your light, close your laptop and put it on your bedside table. Sometimes I watch you sleep for a minute, eyes resting with a constant, beautiful smile on your face, hands always touching each other. I pull your covers up over you, smiling in pain. 

 

I give you kisses goodnight, on your cheek, on your forehead, on the sides of your mouth. I close my eyes and pretend like I'm about to lie down next to you. 

I don't know how you did this, this love thing, because I'm having trouble being in the same room as you. I want to cry whenever I see you, sleepy in the morning with your glasses on, drinking a coffee at the kitchen table. Or when we're playing games and your tongue is sticking part way out of your mouth in concentration. 

I talk you less, and I think you are starting to notice. You ask me what's wrong a lot, but I can't tell you. 

You look at me worried, your eyes wider than usual, your hands reaching out to touch my back. I have to squeeze my eyes shut and quiet the bolts of lightning traveling from your hand all throughout my body. 

Fireworks brighter than New Year's Eve that night on the balcony with champagne and kisses. 

I hate myself for ruining what we could have been, what we should have been. 

Sometimes I lie in your bed next to you, letting your smell seep into me, breathing you in and being careful not to touch you. 

We're just friends, but I can't do this day after day. 

Loving you is a fucking curse. 

Loving you is a fucking blessing. 

 

I am so sorry I missed out on you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> other fic: "Extra Ordinary" (longer chapters, superhero au)
> 
> THANKS FOR READING I LOVE YOU XX


	7. Our Thin Ice Breaks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to the climax bitches

We are sitting on the couch, my eyes downcast.

You are cupping my jaw in your warm hands, asking me if I'm alright. 

Yes, I reply, I'm fine Phil. I'm fine...

Just why do you have to be so goddamn close to me, and why are your hands so soft and why are your bows knit with confusion and worry.

 

"Dan..." 

Now your eyes are looking down at the carpet below us, and you look like you're about to cry and my heart is breaking for you and for me and for everything about us that could have come true of I hadn't been in denial, if I hadn't fucked everything up so perfectly. 

"Dan, why won't you talk to me?"

Your voice is whispery and sad and it breaks a little bit in the middle of your sentence. 

It tugs at me, seeing you this way, and suddenly I just blurt it all out.

I love you, Phil Lester, I have loved you since I was eighteen and as I say it, I realize that's it's true. 

Even as your eyes go wide with something I can't place, even as you drop your hands away from my face and cry out, a strangled yelp, and I don't know what to do, so I lean in, I do what I have wanted to do for so long, and I place my lips right on yours. You are frozen as my lips move against yours, and you aren't kissing me and I know I know I know you don't love me but I don't know what to do. 

You back up, looking at me with scared eyes, scrambling off the couch and tripping away from me. You leave the flat, I hear the door close, and I slump over, crying out in pain as I feel my last hope break away.

I could've have you, Phil Lester, and now I'm alone on the couch where you didn't kiss me back, alone and drowning as the sound of silence fills me up. I can't even cry anymore, I just relive that kiss and every kiss before it like a movie in my mind, a movie rated "E" for Everything's Fucked Up Even More And It's My Fault.

I'm frozen too, just staring into space.

 

I can hear the door open and you are home and I am slinking to the back of the couch, scared of seeing you again, scared of what you will say and what you will do. 

You come to the door of the lounge and you look at me, your hair is messy and you smell like gin and and your eyes won't focus on mine. 

You climb over onto me and you kiss me, I can taste the drinks on your lips, but I kiss you back. I kiss you back even though I know that you will probably forget this in the morning, I kiss you back because I need something to get me through to tomorrow and lying alone in the dark won't do the trick. You pull me up and you cuddle me and I start to cry silent tears because you don't love me, and I know it, but I need you and this is all I will ever get. 

You whisper against my ear that you have loved me since I was eighteen.

I let myself believe you, I let myself calm down and fall asleep in your arms in your sweatshirt with your kisses warm against my lips.

When I wake up in the morning, you are nowhere to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANGST ANGST ANGST hehehehe 
> 
> thanks for your kudos n shit its great
> 
> check out my other fics if you want more angst and complicated storylines in your life 
> 
> until next wednesday bye bitches


	8. counting to ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so this is written kind of strangely i just wanted to try it?? tell me what you think!

1\. dreaming and waking up

I dream that night, a soft dream where we lay on the the gray couch together, your arms wrapped around me cupping my whole body with yours. The edges are soft and so are you, your pale skin blending into me and your breaths on my head, and it feels so warm and it feels so real and my whole body glows and my heart races and I nuzzle into you and sigh out all my worries and you whisper in my ear in your breaky morning voice and it is real, it is so so real

Until it isn't. When my eyes open I am not warm and breathy and falling asleep on a cloud, I am alone. It is a cold morning and all the parts of me that you were touching feel numb with cold. I am frozen and my voice doesn't work and my eyes are wide and I can't blink and I stand up, looking for you in a place I know you aren't. 

Finally I call your name. I sound like a child praying to a god that they aren't sure if they believe in, pleading and unsure and quietly falling. Phil, I say, then louder and louder Phil Phil Phil Phil you didn't leave me right you're here right you were talking the truth and you love me right? Right Phil? 

I need you Phil, I need you to look at me with all the stars in your eyes I yell to you but my voice is broken and I am just calling out, breathless with fear, my words and thoughts unseparated in my head. My eyes fly all over the room and all over the flat and all over the world but you and your drunk whispers are hiding from me.

2\. what you left

A crumpled piece of notebook paper that you probably found in your desk drawer written on with a leaky pen. Time, you wrote, is what you need. We have had so much time, 6 years full of seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months. Have you not had enough time? Have I? Six years of being in love with a boy with black hair and pale skin and blue eyes and a loud voice and a long laugh?

Day after day, you don't come back to the flat, and slowly the fear grows through my stomach. Have you left forever? Will you ever get enough time? I can't be here without you, I can't be anywhere. Streetlights and windows and foods and statues and movies and the goddamn gray couch force memories on me like a mandatory movie. You can't be gone for real for ever and ever, I think to myself, you *can't* be. We're Dan and Phil, we go together. Our names, our brands, our stories, our laughter in the early morning when the rest of the world is stuck in tender sleep. 

3\. where you went

You didn't tell me, Phil Lester, and I don't know where you are. I try to find you with my thoughts and my movies and my long walks at night but you are hiding quite well.

I wear a coat inside now. It's all black with a zipper on the back that you had to zip every time I wore it. Now I zip it by myself and sit on the couch huddled inside it. I don't remember the flat being this cold, like ice fingers running their way up and down me like your eyes but cold and endless. Sometimes I scream inside my head and sometimes I scream out loud and most times I can't tell the difference and sometimes it gets so hot that I have to take off the black jacket and lie on the ground and let my chest bleed out. Shadows walk outside on the street, under the streetlights where we used to walk pressed up against each other. They are stealing our streetlights Phil, I sometimes open the window and scream at them but not really scream I just stare and ask them to go away but they aren't there so they can't. 

4\. places you have been

you have been in my arms when the moon is high in the sky, in my room late at night. I pretend you are still there and I hold you tight and I whisper against your ear. Phil Lester, I say, I will love you forever and never leave you I love you you you you you I love you so much. You smile and nod against me and I play with your hair until you fall against me and I cradle you to sleep with tears that shouldn't be there playing in my eyes. Memories are worse than ghosts I think.

you have been across from me in the coffee shop with messy hair and a big jumper and glasses holding a hot drink with two hands and bringing it up to your face to smell it. Why should I tell you if there's a bit of whipped cream on your nose, why should I tell you if part of the jumper fell off your right shoulder and I'm staring?

you have been in every single waking moment and every dream of mine since you left and I am so so afraid that I will forget the color of your eyes so I focus on them a lot when I'm daydreaming in a pool of myself on the ground.

5\. something else you left

Sometimes I accidentally lie down on your pillow and I smell your cologne everywhere like a shot to my head. Sometimes when I get out of the shower i pick up your towel instead of mine and wrap myself in it and then I smell you all over me for the rest of the day and I cry in pain but I don't want it to go away. I sleep in your room at night so I can be surrounded by you and it almost seems like you just left the house for a little while because everything about you is still here.

Your sheets and duvet smell just like you, like every night when I fall asleep in your bed I'm wrapping myself in your arms. Your posters still hang on the wall and your coats still hang in the closet and your movies are still stacked on your shelves with your stuffed animals and signed books and little trinkets that you bought for no apparent reason. The sticky notes you slap onto your wall drift down every once in a while, and I don't know what it is about "buy more milk" that makes me want to cry. 

Maybe it's that I know that maybe you won't ever come back to the flat at 4 pm soaked and breathing hard and yelling out to come help you with the milk goddammit because it is raining out and you had to run three blocks with 3 gallons of it in your hand. 

6\. begging

Weeks go by and I think I'm going crazy. I spend hours lying on the ground, beyond crying, just numb. My voice stops working and I'm gasping, long, quiet breaths like you used to breathe beside me in bed when you were asleep and I was half-awake. I stare at the sky just in case you are staring at it too. I wonder where you are. I lean out the window and scream your name, but never out loud. Maybe I think you can hear me longing for you. Maybe I'm too afraid that the people walking by will look up and worry about me and my messy hair and bloodshot eyes and oversized green hoodie of yours that I haven't taken off in a long long time.

Finally I can't just call out in my mind anymore. Finally I pull out my phone and find you under a mass of unanswered worries and text you and ask you if you will ever come home. I tell you that I'm afraid of myself when you can't be here with me, I tell you to buy milk and bring it home to wherever you are because I want something to be normal even if I won't know that it is. I tell you that I need you here with me, even just as a friend. I need you Phil Lester, I say, I type. I don't remember if I press send or not, but

7\. you do not reply.  
8\. you do not come home. 

9\. sailing 

I lie on the rug in your room, my eyes staring up at the ceiling watching the air travel around the room in endless circles and thinking, as always, of you. My eyes are squeezed shut as I try to recall every part of you. I have to do this, so that if you *are* gone forever I can remember you in perfect detail. It takes me a while to get your eyes just right, and to remember the shape of your shoulders and neck, but I always always always remember what it's like to have your eyes trained on mine and arms wrapped around me. It's like opening a trapdoor, this remembering, and suddenly I'm falling faster than I've ever fallen before, and for the first time in three weeks I start to cry. 

Silent tears fly down my face and slowly flood the room until I'm floating like a dead man on top of the water. I build a boat out of your posters and I curl up inside it and I sail it away from here.

I sail it to a gray couch and two boys are asleep on top of each other, one smelling like alcohol and the other smelling like sweet sugary ignorance.  
I sail it to a dark bedroom where one boy is asleep and the other is kissing him and tucking him in and lying down beside him, careful not to wake him.  
I sail it to a blizzard in the early morning and the two are throwing snow and laughing and hugging and all is right with the world, until it's not.  
I sail it to another bedroom, except there's only one boy in there, crying and choking and wondering why they have to fight.  
I sail it to a balcony on New Years Eve, and there is champagne and kisses and smiles until the middle of the night, when one boy gets up and leaves.  
I sail it to a streetlight, and the boys lean against it, wrapped up in each other's arms and eyes, one drunk on wine, one drunk on the other.  
I sail it to a bunk bed in the middle of the night and two boys stare at each other through the tiny lens of a computer. It's pixelly and dark, and they're waving goodbye to each other, until next Wednesday. One boy signs off, and the other lies back with a huge smile on his face, then looks back at his computer screen at the other's profile. 

So obviously in love every step of the way, and too stubborn to admit it, the brown haired boy is sailing in a sea of salt.  
Trying to hide everything and instead just hiding himself, the messy haired pale boy is gone. 

 

10\. what you say 

22:14:45: Phil Lester  
"Dan?"

22:20:20: Dan Howell  
"Phil, I understand that you need time. You can have it."

22:21:12: Phil Lester  
"Dan, can I come home?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for your comments and kudos!! i love you guys a lot :)
> 
> other fics: Extra Ordinary (v superhero)


	9. Thoughts and Short Talks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello sexy people this chapter is a short kind of filler type thing but prepare yourselves for next week ;)

I am pacing up and down the hall. You said you were coming home 3 hours ago, and you still haven't arrived yet. Where are you coming from? Or are you just afraid to come back here?

I am afraid for when you do come back. I don't know how to tell you everything. What will I say when I see you? 

What _can_ I say?

It's been three hours of walking up and down the same old hall, and I can't think of anything. 

I can hear the door to the flat open, and I freeze. Suddenly I just want to run back to my room and dive in my bed and pretend to be asleep and deal with all my problems in the morning. You are silent except for your footsteps, and my mouth is hanging open like a fish, frantically trying to come up with something to tell you. 

Something that will make you stay here and never ever leave.

And then, there you are. 

You've gotten a haircut, it's short at the sides, and you're wearing that gray jumper with the foxes on it that makes you look soft and warm. Your eyes meet mine, and they are just as I remembered, blue and green and shy with long eyelashes and crinkles in the corners. You look at me, a suitcase in your hand, and I look at you.

I don't know what to say. Part of me can't believe that you are here, after over a month, you are here right in front of me. I just want to run up to you and hug you and never stop, but I can't do that.

I don't exactly know what I can do. 

So I just call out for you.

 

"Phil."

My voice comes out all mangled and choked and thick, and I sound like I've just spent the past month sobbing. 

A tear finds it way out of my eyes and rushes down my cheek. 

"Phil," I say again, my voice clearer. 

"Say something." 

You smile shyly, like you do when you're meeting someone new. 

I suppose, in a way, it feels like we are meeting for the first time. 

"Hi, Dan. It's good to be home."

And with that, the dam breaks and everything I want to say to you, _need_ to say to you, comes pouring out of my mouth.

"Phil, Phil, I'm so sorry what I did was so stupid and I shouldn't have ever done that it was completely out of line and I know why you left but please stay here with me I promise all I want is for you to be my friend again I don't care if there's nothing else between us because I miss everything being easy."

More tears fall out of my eyes. 

"God, Phil, I miss you."

You walk over to me, a little awkward, and you wrap your arms around me like I am a child.

In a way, I am. I feel like one. 

"I missed you too, Dan."

You step back from me, and you are smiling again, but this time it's your real smile, the one that you use when I am lying against you in the middle of the night and-

No, forget that, forget that. 

You yawn, and smile at me, and you tell me that you are going to head to sleep.

I nod, wish you sweet dreams in a croaky voice, and slip into my own bed. 

You are home. You are home, but you are acting like nothing ever happened between us. It's fine, I think, It's _fine_ because it would just be easier to forget everything and just be Dan and Phil, best friends. 

Except part of me kept thinking that you would come home and leap into my arms and tell me that you really do love me and kiss me and that we would both be falling asleep in my bed. 

But I am here alone. And I should get used to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU FOR YOUR KUDOS AND COMMENTS YOU MAKE MY DAYYYYY :)
> 
> if you r cool check out my other fic Extra Ordinary


	10. Streetlights and Sheets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS IT THE END PLS ENJOY IT I LOVE YOU ALL TO PIECES
> 
> REMEMBER TO CHECK OUT ROYAL BLOOD THIS SATURDAY (!!!!)
> 
> AND READ THE END NOTE BECAUSE IT HAS SOME INFO ABOUT THE ENDING THAT YOU MAY NOT CATCH :))

Months pass, and slowly everything falls back to the way it was. It's normal, nice, we are careful not to talk about anything that happened. 

Part of me aches to hold your hand and pull you closer in the night, but I pretend like I don't want that. 

In public, we are messy and easy and so so close, bumping legs together and touching each others backs and shoulders and thighs because why not, but when we are alone there is an electric fence between us. When we watch tv we use different blankets and different sides of the couch.

But I can give some things up to have you back. 

And it stays this way.

More months pass, we are less afraid of hurting each other, and the electric fence is gone. 

I can't get rid of that part of me that wants to wrap you around me and breathe you in and smile into your skin.  
But I can ignore it now. Because I know that things could be worse. 

I wake up in the middle of night one night and when I walk into the kitchen you are there too, drinking coffee and smiling at me. We go on a walk together, and it seems like the whole city is asleep except us. We sit down on a park bench, and we don't speak, but we're talking and laughing and saying thousands of things inside our heads. 

I can feel your body heat through your coat, and I lean into you and you let me. 

We are breathing together and I let my eyes close and let my mind wander away.  
When I open my eyes, you are staring at me with a peaceful smile on your face.

"Thought you were asleep." You whisper.  
"Awake as always." I whisper back. 

"I love you," I say, but what comes out is "It's dark."  
"So much," you say, but what comes out is "Yeah."

We get up and keep walking, and I grab your hand and kiss your cheek, but just in my mind.

You stop under a streetlight and look across the street and look back at me, and I swear in that moment you put all the stars in the sky.

"Let's play a game," you say, and I smile back at you because I will do whatever you want.

We sit down on the pavement under a streetlight at one in the morning and ignore the few people that are walking on the other side of the street and looking at us.

"20 questions." You tell me, and I groan in response.

But of course I agree, because it's you.

"Okay. You go first." I say, leaning against the light.

"What's your favorite color?"

I laugh at how simple your question is.

"Guess."

You narrow your eyes, tilting your head and looking like you're about to interrogate me. I laugh at you and laugh at me and laugh at the night sky.

And if I'm being honest, I didn't have a favorite color until you yelled "blue!" and your hair fell over your face and you were smiling like a little kid.  
So I told you you were right, and you clapped for yourself in the dark on the sidewalk and now I can't stop seeing blue everywhere I look. Especially in your eyes. 

 

And then you yawn, melting into the ground a bit more.

"Sleepy, are we? Maybe we should head back to the house."  
"No," you protest, "we have to finish the game!!"

I smile. We have all the time in the world to finish it.

 

It's Christmas, and you're spending it with your family, and I'm spending it with mine. We leave the flat and lock the door and we hug each other goodbye at the entrance to the airport.

"See you in a week! I don't how I'll do it."  
"Oh come on, it'll be just like old times."

 

I'm sitting in my top bunk, in my old room in my old house.  
It's 3 am and I'm staring at my computer screen.

I'm waiting, of course, for you.

And suddenly there you are, your face taking up my whole computer screen, your blue eyes shining and a smile lighting up your whole face. 

"Just like old times," I say, "except I can actually see you now."  
"Sssh, your parents might hear!" You reply, and we both laugh. 

We talk about everything and nothing for a very long time.

"Dan! We never finished that game of 20 questions!"  
"And you want to do that right now?"  
"Go! It's your turn!"  
"Fine, fine, just let me think."

And I do think, I think of how long it's been since our first Skype, of how much you mean to me, of how many memories of mine are tangled up in you.  
Of all the times _I_ have been tangled up in you.

The thought comes into my mind, and before I can rationalize it, I hear myself speak.

"Phil, would you ever consider dating a guy?"

Your eyes widen and you let out a choked sound.

And then I see it. You look at me the same way I look at you and you smile at me and...

"If his name is Dan."

And I can feel everything in me light up, and I just laugh, at how stupid we were to stop this moment for years and years.

"I'm sorry I didn't realize it sooner, Phil...."  
"I'm sorry I tried to forget it."

And we just smile at each other through the camera, and everything feels right for the first time in a long time. 

"I need to go," I say, but what comes out is "I love you."  
"I need to go too," you say, but what comes out is "So much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS !!!!
> 
> You guys are really the best, thank you ever so much for all your kudos and comments and general sweetness.  
> I really hope you liked the end, just in case you didn't catch it the whole "would you ever consider dating a guy" thing is what Phil said to Dan in the first chapter.
> 
> If you want more from me, check out my other fic "Extra Ordinary"  
> And on Saturday I'm starting a new pic called "Royal Blood" which I'm incredibly excited abouttttt <33333

**Author's Note:**

> leave me a comment I'm very lonely :))))


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